Clinical Interventions in Aging 2014:9 submit your manuscript | www.dovepress.com
Dovepress
Dovepress
1315
Traditional Thai massage in stroke spasticity
different (P=0.195), whereas depression scores increased in the PT group (P=0.747). No difference was found between the groups (P=0.313).
Figure 5 presents the QoL of the TTM and PT groups at Week 0 and Week 6. At the end of study, the total QoL scores of both groups had increased significantly when compared with baseline scores (P=0.041 in TTM; P=0.001 in PT groups). However, there was no significant difference between the groups (P=0.715).
Table 4 compares patients’ assessments of their outcomes by group. The number of patients in the TTM group who reported that their feelings of spasticity had decreased was greater than those who reported the same in the PT group (79.2% versus 52.4%; P=0.057). However, the functions of their limbs improved only 37%–38% with no difference between the groups (P=0.967). Concerning patient satisfaction, 90.5% of the patients were satisfied with the PT program compared with 75% of the massage patients. Again, there was no significant difference between the two groups (P=0.427). The number of adverse events that occurred during the study did not differ between the groups (P=0.807), as shown in Table 5. There were more patients who experienced adverse events of muscle stiffness, muscle pain, and muscle soreness in the TTM group compared with those in the PT group. However, no significant difference between the groups was found.